Bike advocates push for more use, safety in Newton

An effort is underway to make cycling a more appealing alternative to driving in Newton.

Trevor Jones

An effort is underway to make cycling a more appealing alternative to driving in Newton.

Advocates and city officials, who see cycling as a way to improve the health of the population and reduce road congestion, are working on plans to better enforce existing laws for sharing the road and to extend bike lanes throughout the city.

Building new infrastructure is key to getting more people to get out of their cars, according to Andreae Downs, chair of the Transportation Advisory Group.

"Unless Newton is the outlier, once you start building bike infrastructure you get more cyclists," said Downs.

Newton plans to establish 90 miles of inter-connected roadways throughout the city. That includes existing routes on Langley Road, and Beacon, Centre and Walnut streets, as well as the addition of space on high-traffic priority roads such as Commonwealth Avenue and Walnut Street.

The city also plans to implement traffic-calming measures, use signage to remind drivers to share the road, and engineer corrections to dangerous areas for cyclists. The implementation will mean the narrowing of existing roadways in some places, the reorganization of some traffic patterns or the prioritization of bike safety over parking needs outside of business districts.

There are some parts of Newton that will never be suitable for bike lanes because the road isn’t wide enough to accommodate full lanes each for cars, bikes and pedestrians, advocates and city officials said. Chestnut Street, they said, is one of the key examples of a roadway that could never be converted.

But there are other means of accommodating cyclists where a bike lane won’t work, including sharrows that remind drivers of the potential for cyclists on the road.

Behind nearby communities

A 2010 survey by the League of American Bicyclists found that 0.6 percent of Newton workers bike to work. In Boston, Cambridge and Somerville, the number of bicycle commuters made up 1.4 percent, 6.8 percent and 3.6 percent of the total working population, respectively.

City officials acknowledge Newton is behind nearby communities in terms of the use of bikes as an alternative to cars and they estimate one-third of all the city’s carbon emissions come from motor vehicles. They see this plan as a means to improve access to safe on-road space for cyclists.

Lois Levin, founder of Bike Newton, said the city has the right people and blueprint in place to address the issue, but it would take a cultural shift to get more people cycling.

Growing up in Brookline, Levin, 71, said she wouldn’t have imagined getting in a car for trips around town. She said most people don’t realize how many of our decisions--from where we work to where we take our children to daycare--revolve around having a car.

Levin, who also serves as the city's bicycle coordinator, said the next key initiative for the city should be connecting to the bike-sharing system Hubway. The system was launched in 2011 in Boston and has since expanded to Brookline, Cambridge and Somerville.

Levin said Newton is a natural candidate for the program and the first step would be connecting with Boston College and expanding to other areas such as Newton-Wellesley Hospital and Lasell College.

The city can’t continue to grow, according to Downs, if the population remains as reliant on cars as it is now. She said added congestion or more parking garages isn’t the answer, so it will require a mix of public transit, walking and biking to foster growth.

"The point is to give people a lot of alternatives so you can run your errands in many ways and you’re not restricted to your car," said Downs.

Corraling bikes, customers

One of the new initiatives visitors can expect to see in Newton Centre this summer will be a bike corral. The corral, which is essentially a fenced in bike rack, will be placed along the street in a space that was previously not designated for parking.

Once it gets too cold for the bikes, the corral will be removed and it will create an additional parking space for merchants.

Downs said the corral will be a visible reminder about cycling and it will also provide more space for people to visit shops because it can accommodate up to 10 bikes. If the corral doesn’t bring more business to the area, it will be moved somewhere else.

"Each person beyond the first bike is an additional customer," said Downs. "It’s not [intended] to restrict parking and make merchants mad. It’s [an attempt to] increase business by increasing the capacity of each of these really valuable spots."

But with added cyclists comes added risk of injury. Over the past five years there have been an average of 29 bicycle accidents each year in Newton, but that number jumped to 48 in 2012, according to police records.

There was also a fatal bike accident at the intersection of Commonwealth and Lowell avenues in 2010, when a 21-year-old Colorado man died after colliding with an SUV.

Advocates say one of the keys to improving bike safety – and as a result get more people willing to use bikes – is enforcing existing laws.

Captain Marc Gromada, commander of the traffic bureau, acknowledged that enforcing these laws "wasn’t the number one priority in the past." But with new laws in place and increased priority placed on bike access, the department is stepping up its efforts. Each officer went through a refresher course on the laws and proper procedure in April and enforcement efforts became more aggressive last summer, according to police, with 73 bike-related citations issued and projections for even higher numbers this year. Gramada said that’s a big jump from years past, when the number of tickets would be in the single digits.

There are also efforts to improve pedestrian safety, with plans to increase citations for crosswalk violations as well. In addition to ticketing, part of meeting these demands, Gromada said, is increased presence at trouble spots to prevent these violations in the first place.

One of the biggest issues facing police, according to Gromada, is traffic congestion that has only gotten worse over the years.

"Our biggest challenge is Newton’s a cut-through for a lot of people going to Boston or trying to avoid the tolls," said Gromada.

4 new cops

In an effort to enhance enforcement of bike and pedestrian safety, roughly $500,000 of the $11.4 million override package that passed in March is dedicated to hiring four new officers and purchasing new equipment.

It’s unclear at this point how the department will divvy up the new officers, but they will be split between the patrol units and the traffic bureau. The Traffic Bureau is dedicated solely to traffic-related enforcement, while patrol units can be used for targeted enforcement and secondary traffic enforcement. Regardless, the added force is welcome news to police officials.

"When you come over here you realize how much work we have," said Sgt. Jay Babcock of the Traffic Bureau. "All the complaints come in and we only have so many individuals we can spread the wealth to."

"Getting us a complement of four officers in the department only enhances our ability to correct the problems that are out there," Babcock said.

City officials and advocates also say it’s also important to educate the public about sharing the road and following the laws. And some say it’s possible that increased bike travel can actually improve safety.

"There’s strength in numbers once people start to bike," said Levin. "Everyone is safer because we are forced to slow down."